Exam Anxiety is a common phenomenon negatively affecting the academic, emotional, personal and social lives of almost 20% students across nationalities including India. Test anxious students score poor grades/marks and have poor mental health in comparison to others. It may be fatal at times. There are reports of deliberate self-harm and suicide by students highlighting the need for timely intervention. This blog is an attempt to bring students, parents, teachers and professionals together.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Exam Anxiety and Exam Stress

In the modern world, there is lots of pressure to perform well in the exams. This pressure stems from the very fact that the career opportunities depend on the performance in the exams and our wrongly grounded educational system adds to it. It creates stress in the students and causes anxiety. This examination anxiety is not bad in itself; up to an extent in facilitates the performance. But when it is beyond a limit, the effect becomes detrimental. If the individual's resources are not adequate to handle this pressure, his coping fails. This failure to cope results in lower academic performance and it may be fatal at times. There are reports of deliberate self-harm and suicide by students due to exam anxiety and academic stress. All this highlights the need for timely intervention in this area. The posts that follows this one will focus on the nature as well as mangement of exam anxiety.